... is going to require, indeed, demand, a concentrated and coordinated mass media effort. Just knocking on doors does not reach nearly enough people. Now, don't go all Pollyanna on me when I refer to those on the Dark Side of the Aisle as the enemy, 'cause that is exactly what they are now. T'was not ever thus, but it sure as hell is now. Get used to it. Senator Jim Jeffords of Vermont put it quite succinctly: "I didn't leave the Republican Party, it left me."
The GOP welcomes and exalts the very worst among us, and they are fundamentally dishonest and malicious people. How do we counter that?
The Republicans' long game has been better than ours by several orders of magnitude for decades. They own, operate, and at the very least, heavily influence virtually all the major news outlets, so we can never count on them to be truthful to anyone, especially our target demographic: The rational, thinking individual with a conscience, and some sense of honor and fairness.
The GOP thinks they own YouTube, but they do not.They've monopolized it because we let them. Old Fuddy-duddies (of which I am one) have never been completely comfortable with the new social media landscape. That has to change. Younger people grew up with it. For them, it's always been there. So they are the ones to whom we must turn in order to make the most of its vast potential. TikTok's fate is yet to be determined, so that one's out of the equation... for now. There are other platforms we can utilize, but first, we must develop a consistent and coherent message that does not rely on numbers or policy all the time. The Rs constantly bad-mouth us with lies, so let's turn the tables on them and excoriate them with demonstrable truth.
One subject they try to dismiss as a hoax in Climate Change. They beat that drum constantly because they know it's true, and they know they big-money donors are often the ones that are responsible for it, but still refuse to do their part to ameliorate it. "What has posterity ever done for ME?" is their constant refrain. They blithely condemn their own children to an irreparably damaged planet in favor of immediate profits, so you can imagine the utter contempt they have for yours. Thought and Prayers is the best you'll ever get from them.
We must tell them the truth, but first, we hamstring them with their own lies, and why they still spew them. Then we flood the zone with irrefutable proof of their villainy in quick factoids and clips of the damage they've already caused. Before and after pix and videos of glaciers; animated graphics of what their homes in coastal cities will look like in their lifetimes. And the hellscapes they'll leave their children.
Climate change isn't culture war, it is a battle for the continued existence of the human species and all life on Earth. Hammer the motherfuckers with their perfidy, and never let up.
I'll continue this rant, but right now I'm hungry. Got any ideas? Let's hear 'em. The time for theorizing is over. Now it's time for action.
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